A portion of 6th Street is on the list of possible improvements under L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti's Great Streets program in San Pedro, CA on Tuesday, January 14, 2014. Other streets that are being talked about in the 15th District include the Gaffey Street bridge, 7th Street, and Avalon Boulevard in Wilmington. (Scott Varley / Staff Photographer)

The pedestrian bridge at the entrance to San Pedro is on the list of possible improvements under L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti's Great Streets program in San Pedro, CA on Tuesday, January 14, 2014. Other streets that are being talked about in the 15th District include 6th and 7th streets and Avalon Boulevard in Wilmington. (Scott Varley / Staff Photographer)

A battle of the streets could be brewing in the Harbor Area as competing makeover ideas are eyed for Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti’s Great Streets Initiative.

The program and its impact specifically on San Pedro was discussed Tuesday morning at a meeting of the San Pedro Chamber of Commerce’s Economic Development and Policy Committee.

The Great Streets program, announced in October as Garcetti’s first executive directive, aims to improve and beautify 40 streets throughout the city of Los Angeles by adding landscaping, features such as pocket parks and plazas, bike corrals, and sculptures and murals.

In his rollout announcement of the program, Garcetti specifically named San Pedro’s Sixth Street as a potential candidate. Plans already were being floated to make Sixth and Seventh streets one-way arteries to allow diagonal parking and open-air dining throughout the main corridors of the historic downtown shopping district.

But the town’s Gaffey Street entrance and exit via the 110 Freeway also was earmarked on the city’s initial draft list of 180 potential streets to be considered for the mayor’s program.

While both conceivably could make the final list, a Garcetti spokeswoman said the timing wouldn’t be simultaneous and funding will be a factor as streets are improved.

“We expect only to be able to do three to five (streets) a year,” said Vicki Curry, ‎associate director of communications for Garcetti. “The whole concept is to leverage existent resources so the city isn’t necessarily bringing new money to rehab these streets.”

She said “possibly both” Sixth and Gaffey streets will be included in the final list, but if so they would likely be done a few years apart.

“There’s been a working group meeting since mid-October and they’ve been developing a list of candidate streets,” Curry said. “I believe they’re going to start announcing them one or two at a time as they’re ready to go.”

The first announcements, she said, could come as early as the end of this month or the beginning of February.

“It will be an ongoing process,” she said.

In Wilmington, Avalon Boulevard is expected to be the runaway first choice.

“It was a happy coincidence,” Johnson said. “This was an initiative we’d embarked on six or seven months ago and then the idea that it might fit in with the mayor’s first executive directive — how lucky, if it works, if it fits.”

Both streets terminate at Harbor Boulevard, where visitors can enter the waterfront area, including Ports O’ Call Village to the south.

Octaviano Rios, Garcetti’s Harbor Area representative, told members of the chamber committee that Sixth Street “is a great pick” for the streets program.

Johnson’s plans also call for new signage on Gaffey to direct motorists into downtown and toward the waterfront.

Traffic on Sixth Street would be one-way east to west and traffic on Seventh would be one-way west to east.

The project, which would cover the blocks east of Pacific, is viewed as a way to help spur revitalization of downtown restaurants and shops while providing a connection to the water. Linda Grimes, chairwoman of the San Pedro Arts, Culture and Entertainment District, said outside dining has been a focus of that committee as well.

Also already in the works — but further along than Johnson’s proposal and with some funding already identified — is the city’s plan to revitalize Gaffey Street from the freeway to 13th Street, a stretch that has long been bemoaned as an eyesore for those entering the port community.

It would be a likely candidate to roll into the Great Streets program, city officials said.

An initial effort to spruce up the entrance came when city officials opened a welcome park August 2007. The 1.1-acre park replaced a closed gas station with grass, trees, decorative stone and a standard of flags.

Now the city also has acquired a long-vacant parcel on the other side of the street to develop into an “exit” park that motorists will see as they get on the 110 Freeway or Vincent Thomas Bridge from Gaffey.

The revitalization effort — for now still separate from the Great Streets Initiative — also would bring new palm trees, a new median and more work on the foot bridge overpass as envisioned by the Los Angeles Neighborhood Initiative working with the city’s Department of Transportation. Bids are being sought now for the conceptual project.

The project also calls for creation of a business improvement district for Gaffey Street.